Girls' self-efficacy in the context of neighborhood gender stratification.

Scholars have linked neighborhood characteristics to self-efficacy, but few have considered how gender factors into this association. We integrate literature on neighborhoods, gender stratification, and self-efficacy to examine the association between women's relative resources among neighborhood residents and adolescents' self-efficacy. We hypothesize that girls report more self-efficacy when they reside in neighborhoods where women have more socioeconomic resources relative to men. We test this hypothesis using data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods and the 1990 Census. Results from multilevel regression models with gender-interacted effects indicate the neighborhood level of women's relative resources was not associated with boys' self-efficacy. However, girls reported higher self-efficacy when women's relative resources in their neighborhoods were greater. This association persisted after including potential individual- and neighborhood-level confounding variables. Our study underscores the importance of attending to gendered processes when understanding how neighborhoods impact youth.

The Influence of Women's Neighborhood Resources on Perceptions of Social Disorder.

Research links neighborhood social disorder with poorer health. But factors beyond observed disorder may influence perceptions that social disorder is problematic. This study investigates whether women's aggregate socioeconomic resources relative to men's in the broader neighborhood context attenuate the extent to which more prevalent observed social disorder within the immediate residential neighborhood contributes to perceptions of more problematic social disorder. This attenuation likely is pronounced among women, for whom sexual harassment in public spaces is a more salient concern compared to men. Using data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, multilevel models analyze individual perceptions of problematic social disorder (N=3,107) regressed on the interactive effect of observed social disorder within the census block group (N=525) and women's relative resources within the neighborhood cluster (N=80). The results show that women's relative resources within the broader neighborhood context protect against women's perceptions that typically undesirable neighborhood conditions are problematic.

Ecological Networks and Neighborhood Social Organization.

Drawing on the social disorganization tradition and the social ecological perspective of Jane Jacobs, the authors hypothesize that neighborhoods composed of residents who intersect in space more frequently as a result of routine activities will exhibit higher levels of collective efficacy, intergenerational closure, and social network interaction and exchange. They develop this approach employing the concept of ecological networks-two-mode networks that indirectly link residents through spatial overlap in routine activities. Using data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey, they find evidence that econetwork extensity (the average proportion of households in the neighborhood to which a given household is tied through any location) and intensity (the degree to which household dyads are characterized by ties through multiple locations) are positively related to changes in social organization between 2000-2001 and 2006-2008. These findings demonstrate the relevance of econetwork characteristics-heretofore neglected in research on urban neighborhoods-for consequential dimensions of neighborhood social organization.

The Role of Immigrant Concentration Within and Beyond Residential Neighborhoods in Adolescent Alcohol Use.

Neighborhoods are salient contexts for youth that shape adolescent development partly through informal social controls on their behavior. This research examines how immigrant concentration within and beyond the residential neighborhood influences adolescent alcohol use. Residential neighborhood immigrant concentration may lead to a cohesive, enclave-like community that protects against adolescent alcohol use. But heterogeneity in the immigrant concentrations characterizing the places residents visit as they engage in routine activities outside of the neighborhood where they live may weaken the social control benefits of the social ties and shared cultural orientations present in enclave communities. This study investigates whether the protective influence of residential neighborhood immigrant concentration on adolescent alcohol consumption diminishes when youth live in communities where residents collectively are exposed to areas with more diverse immigrant concentrations. This study tests this contention by analyzing survey and geographic routine activity space data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey, and the 2000 census. The sample includes 793 adolescents (48.7% female, 16.5% foreign-born Latino, 42.5% US-born Latino, 11.0% black, 30% white/other) between the ages of 12 and 17 who live in 65 neighborhoods in Los Angeles County. Immigrant concentration among these neighborhoods derives primarily from Latin America. The results from multilevel models show that immigrant concentration protects against adolescent alcohol use only when there is low neighborhood-level diversity of exposures to immigrant concentration among the contexts residents visit outside of their residential neighborhood. This research highlights the importance of considering the effects of aggregate exposures to non-home contexts on adolescent wellbeing.

State contexts and the criminalization of marital rape across the United States.

Spousal exemptions from rape prosecution persist in many US states' criminal codes thereby compromising women's rights to bodily self-control and personhood. Power resources theory-which emphasizes that given limited resources, groups act strategically to achieve goals-and gender stratification perspectives guided an event history analysis of the likelihood of marital rape criminalization in US states between 1978 and 2007. Findings suggest criminalization is influenced by the expected marginal benefit of law reform, women's relative socioeconomic resources, and racial heterogeneity. This research highlights the importance of considering how existing laws, group resources, and intersecting social cleavages influence the expansion of women's rights.

Neighborhoods and adolescent health-risk behavior: an ecological network approach.

This study integrates insights from social network analysis, activity space perspectives, and theories of urban and spatial processes to present an novel approach to neighborhood effects on health-risk behavior among youth. We suggest spatial patterns of neighborhood residents' non-home routines may be conceptualized as ecological, or "eco"-networks, which are two-mode networks that indirectly link residents through socio-spatial overlap in routine activities. We further argue structural configurations of eco-networks are consequential for youth's behavioral health. In this study we focus on a key structural feature of eco-networks--the neighborhood-level extent to which household dyads share two or more activity locations, or eco-network reinforcement--and its association with two dimensions of health-risk behavior, substance use and delinquency/sexual activity. Using geographic data on non-home routine activity locations among respondents from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (L.A.FANS), we constructed neighborhood-specific eco-networks by connecting sampled households to "activity clusters," which are sets of spatially-proximate activity locations. We then measured eco-network reinforcement and examined its association with dimensions of adolescent health risk behavior employing a sample of 830 youth ages 12-17 nested in 65 census tracts. We also examined whether neighborhood-level social processes (collective efficacy and intergenerational closure) mediate the association between eco-network reinforcement and the outcomes considered. Results indicated eco-network reinforcement exhibits robust negative associations with both substance use and delinquency/sexual activity scales. Eco-network reinforcement effects were not explained by potential mediating variables. In addition to introducing a novel theoretical and empirical approach to neighborhood effects on youth, our findings highlight the importance of intersecting conventional routines for adolescent behavioral health.

Legal Cynicism and Parental Appraisals of Adolescent Violence.

Research suggests that legal cynicism-a cultural frame in which the law is viewed as illegitimate and ineffective-encourages violence to maintain personal safety when legal recourse is unreliable. But no study has tested the impact of legal cynicism on appraisals of violence. Drawing from symbolic interaction theory and cultural sociology, we tested whether neighbourhood legal cynicism alters the extent to which parents appraise their children's violence as indicative of aggressive or impulsive temperaments using data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. We find that legal cynicism attenuates the positive association between adolescent violence and parental assessments of aggression and impulsivity. Our study advances the understanding of micro-level processes through which prevailing cultural frames in the neighbourhood shape violence appraisals.

Murder, political resources, and women's political success.

This analysis tests overlooked sociological hypotheses about women's presence in the state legislatures and the House of Representatives. Stereotypes about women suggest that shifts in social conditions affect these political outcomes by making such stereotypes more or less salient. Findings indicate that beliefs about female competencies-such as women's purported unwillingness to endorse violent solutions-should reduce support for female candidates when increases in violent crime create demands for increasingly severe punishments. Since women also are typecast as being more protective of vulnerable populations than males, states with larger minority populations should have additional women in both legislatures. Pooled time-series models based on 1127 state-years show that fewer women were present in the state legislatures or in state delegations to the House after increases in the murder rates. States with larger minority populations, however, had more women in these two legislative bodies. Our results support claims that under researched social conditions produce political climates that either benefit or harm women who seek these offices.

The Social Ecology of Public Space: Active Streets and Violent Crime in Urban Neighborhoods.

Drawing on one element of Jacobs' (1961) discussion of the social control benefits of "eyes on the street," this paper explores the link between the prevalence of active streets and violence in urban neighborhoods. Three distinct data sources from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods are merged to explore the functional form and potential contingency of the active streets-violence relationship: (1) video data capturing the presence of people on neighborhood streets; (2) longitudinal data on adolescents (ages 11 to 16) and their self-reports of witnessing severe violence; and (3) community survey data on neighborhood social organizational characteristics. Results from multilevel models indicate that the proportion of neighborhood streets with adults present exhibits a nonlinear association with exposure to severe violence. At low prevalence, the increasing prevalence of active streets is positively associated with violence exposure. Beyond a threshold, however, increases in the prevalence of active streets serves to reduce the likelihood of violence exposure. The analyses offer no evidence that the curvilinear association between active streets and violence varies by levels of collective efficacy, and only limited evidence that it varies by anonymity. Analyses of data on homicide and violent victimization corroborate these findings.